


Initiation

by MarcoFro5



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Fraternities & Sororities, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27365266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcoFro5/pseuds/MarcoFro5
Summary: Revenge is a dish best served alone.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Initiation

Melissa nearly slipped on the bloody tile floor, bare feet offering little traction as she ran down the hallway. Even though she knew the house like the back of her hand, she felt lost. The faint purple glow from behind her cast shadows on her every move, each step unsure under the dim lights.

“Why are you running?” Mia asked, voice carrying throughout the house like an intercom even though she was right behind her. There was an eerie calm to it, matched by the tap of shoes against the floor. 

She didn’t respond, focusing entirely on making sure she kept enough distance between her and Mia. Fear gripped her heart and wouldn’t let go, each and every breath hard to force out. Melissa knew it was pointless but she couldn’t bring herself to stop running, to give up on everything she worked so hard to create here. Fuck that.

Melissa took a breath to center herself. Emerald energy engulfed her hands and made it hard to see in front of her. She stoked the energy, intensity shifting in her palms until she got the result she wanted. The blood made her slide a few feet as she spun around to face Mia. She walked with annoying confidence, practically strutting down the hallway towards her in a dress that she swam in. Lydia’s dress, Melissa realized. She had helped pick it out for last year’s spring formal. Now the floral print was bloodied and slashed from shoulder strap to hemline, midsection visible thanks to the bright purple and jagged knife Mia carried. The dress would look better as ashes than with her wearing it anyway.

The emerald energy coalesced into tight orbs of fire that crackled under the stress from her maintaining its shape. With both palms outstretched towards Mia, she let loose a wave of fire that flooded the hallway and spilled into the open rooms. She didn’t wait to see the body, instead turning back around to run for the sun room where she could hopefully jump off the balcony.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Mia asked, stepping in front of the sun room’s doorway. Her purple knife glowed and dimmed in tune with her voice. “All of us as one happy family?”

Melissa turned right with her head on a swivel, trying to keep a mental map in place as she ran for her life. 

“You worked so hard for this,” Mia said, following after her with no urgency. “I’ll even let you enjoy it, I won’t hurt you like the others.”

She couldn’t help from looking at the blood in the hallway and doorways after she said that. That’s all the others were now, red smears on the tile with a hand or bits of fabric strewn about. It made her vision blur and eyes sting the longer she thought about it. 73 members of her chapter, all gone. Even the ones she held most dear, the truly special ones she’d built up from nothing were nothing more than stains.

Two more Mia’s came around the corner up ahead, blocking her off while the other stalked behind her. They wore different dresses but everything else was identical down to the curly brown hair and disgusting burn mark on their right arms. Melissa lashed out, letting her frustrations fuel her power until her arms were bathed in fire. The green flames danced past her fingertips until she willed them into tendrils that practically doubled her reach. Her speed robbed the whips of some of their power as she swung them, embers trailing behind them.

The fire ropes crashed into the bodies, setting them aflame. The house was a lost cause, her power already too far spread to do anything about it at this point. Maybe that was for the best. She wasn’t perfect, she could admit that. But there was a level of satisfaction that at least her mistakes would die along with everything else. So long as her fire reached the basement, the only mistake the public would find out about would be Mia Thornton.

Melissa rushed past the growing storm of smoke and flames only for a purple dagger to fly out, jagged edge finding her arm and scratching it. The pain only lasted a second, but the discomfort didn’t stop as Melissa kept running. She chanced a look and regretted it, the wound healed but the skin around it visibly shifting and twisting in muted discoloration before taking on a shade just a tad tanner than the rest of her arm. Laughter echoed in the house, but it was the uncertainty that haunted her as the rest of her arm started to feel like it had a spreading rash. It was a scar of a different sort and she had no way to know if it needed to be healed or chopped off.

Not that she even had a way to do either. Her options dwindled with each step no matter how many Mia’s she seemed to put down. Fire still raged on her hands but she couldn’t use it to hurt herself no matter how hard she tried. Melissa was a mouse in a maze, walls closing in around her the more she used her power. The third floor was flooded in flames and the first was flooded with Mia’s. She was sandwiched between hell and highwater, and running just seemed to cage her in further. Melissa would have to burn it all down and hope she didn’t choke on the ashes.

She shifted direction toward the lounge, the heart of both the building and the sorority she’d practically built from scratch four years ago. A fitting end, she thought, sprinting around a corner. Melissa let her power run wild in her hands, the flames climbing up her arms and torso. She would become a supernova, blowing a hole through the core of the building and bringing it down on top of her and the Mia’s. Just the thought put a smile on her face that she knew she didn’t deserve given the circumstances.

Melissa opened the door to the lounge and her heart dropped to her stomach. It had always been their sanctuary of sorts, whether used for late night cramming or making food before patrols. It was just as bustling as always, packed with girls who turned to look at her as soon as she walked in. 

“You’re predictable,” at least 30 Mia’s said in unison. “A creature of habit, and that habit is being as toxic and destructive as possible.”

“Projecting a bit, are we?” Melissa said

All of them smiled, tilting their heads in synchrony to the point that they looked like reflections in a room of mirrors. 

“It’s over, all of it,” they said. “The torture-”

“Hazing,” Melissa corrected.

“Brainwashing.”

“Recruitment.”

“Hate.”

“Oh, come on, stop taking it all so personally.”

The ones sitting down were standing now, all gesturing their arms forward so Melissa could see the burn mark that ran down their arms. Instead, she rolled her eyes, the fire covering her body getting more comfortable in her grasp for her to stoke and grow.

“It was just an ice breaker,” Melissa said. Here eyes roved the room for a target.

“You almost killed me!” the Mia’s shouted, their voices loud and shrill enough Melissa worried it’d set off a fire alarm. 

“Because you suck!” Melissa shouted back. “Seriously, I go through all this work to get you powers and you don’t even so much as say thank you.”

“I never asked for this!”

“Oh please, you signed up the day you made a bid,” Melissa said. “Even you aren’t that dumb. You heard the rumors, you read the college paper. You flocked to Sig Delt because you want what every small fish in a big pond wants. You wanted to be a fucking shark. Congratulations.”

The scream was primal, unhinged. Melissa was really fucking glad she wasn’t the one making the noise as the dagger went through her back and out her chest. Purple light swallowed up the green fire as she fell to her knees, the Mia behind her pushing it deeper inside of her. Melissa’s muscles spasmed as she did her best to maintain composure. She reached for her power but it was like a string had been cut, connection snapped. A shame, she would’ve liked watching that bitch burn some more. 

“Fuck you,” Mia spat out as she pulled the dagger out, Melissa literally crumpling onto the floor, body twitching.

She could live with that. With this. Dying with those as the last words she heard. It beat whatever shitty line Mia practiced in the mirror to deliver after hiding her actual body behind the door for a cheap shot. That thought sparked others in Melissa’s head, flashes of memory finding their way in her head. Mia crying. Mia putting a knife into Gloria’s throat. Throwing heels against her dorm room wall. Even more fucking crying. 

Melissa kept her eyes open, struggling to find an anchor point for them as her blonde hair darkened into curls. She was smaller now, weaker in a way that didn’t piss her off as much as she thought it would. Her body continued changing beyond her control as the blood loss slowed and the gaping wound started to mend. She would be dead, she convinced herself, trying to find at least some relief in all of this. Her mistakes would follow her to a grave she wouldn’t get. Melissa put the last bit of energy she had into raising a middle finger with nails painted in a gaudy yellow that made her want to hurl.

Mia stood up with the help of herself, both of them wiping at the blood that stained a dress she admittedly couldn’t pull off. That was fine. Everything was fine, even though the hollow feeling of hurt still felt raw in her throat. There wasn’t any satisfaction in it like she hoped. Nothing was solved and only more questions were coming.

“Everything’s fine,” she said to her.

There was comfort in hearing it out loud, having it told to her rather than rattling in her own head. She wrung her hand, flecks of blood landing on the floor.

“Everything is going to be okay,” all of her said, a chorus of comfort echoing through the house.


End file.
